_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      V   V   SSSS   OOO   PPPP                 \__      |_|      __/         
      V   V  S      O   O  P   P                   --____/ \____--            
      V   V   SSS   O   O  PPPP                    _ _ _ --- _ _ _            
       V V       S  O   O  P                      |_|_|_|  @|_|_|_|           
        V    SSSS    OOO   P                             o-o                  
                                                          /                   
      ***  N    E    W    S  ***                        <)                    

AO6

The deadline for proposals submitted in response to the sixth VSOP Announcement of Opportunity is Friday June 1st. AO6 documentation will be available from the VSOP web site next week. Sample (u,v) coverages for the rest of 2001 and early 2002 are already available.

AO5 REVIEW

The results of the Science Review Committee review of AO5 proposals have finally been sent to the designated contact persons. Any PI or contact person who has not received their review should contact the VSOP Science Operations Group as soon as possible.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

The results of a VSOP observation of the z=3.57 quasar PKS 2215+020 at 1.6 GHz (corresponding to 7.6 GHz in the source frame) in September 1997 using HALCA and a global VLBI array of 15 ground-based radio telescopes have been published recently by Lobanov et al., in ApJ v.547 p.714 (2001). PKS 2215+020 is an optically faint, radio-loud quasar, which remarkably has also been detected in X-rays by ROSAT. The X-ray image showed a marginally extended structure elongated along P.A.~60 deg. This coincides with the elongation seen in a VLA image of this object. The VSOP image of PKS 2215+020 revealed a rich core-jet morphology and unusually large jet, which can be traced up to 300 h^-1 parsecs -- by far the longest jet observed at redshifts above 3. The direction of the jet coincides with the elongation visible in the VLA and ROSAT images. This indicates that the most extended component seen in the VSOP images may be the working surface of a young jet propagating through a dense environment. VSOP's resolving power enabled the measurement of the transverse width of the jet, which provided an estimate for the mass of the central black hole of ~4 billion solar masses. The sizes and brightness temperatures derived from the model of the source structure are consistent with the adiabatic energy losses in relativistic shocks embedded in the jet. All these findings, combined with the substantial redshift of the source, make PKS 2215+020 an exceptional laboratory for studies of nuclear activity in the younger Universe.

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi